EIGHT
On Tuesday morning, Sukhanov woke up late and was surprised to find himself smiling; he must have had an especially pleasant dream. Casting around his memory for its fading shimmer, he emerged yawning into the hallway and was surprised again, even more pleasantly, by the delicious smell of fried onions zestfully seasoning the whole apartment. Thinking that his life without Valya’s culinary talents might turn out to be acceptable after all, he sleepily followed his nose into the kitchen—and upon entering, was shocked to see Dalevich bending over the stove, wearing Nina’s apron and flourishing a spatula.
“You’ve got to try this,” said Ksenya, speaking with her mouth full. “The best omelet I’ve had in my life!”
Conscious of the ridiculous figure he cut standing in a wide shaft of sunlight, dressed in polka-dot pajamas that betrayed the rotundity of his stomach, with an undulating weave of the sofa’s pattern printed across his cheek, Sukhanov announced that he was not really hungry (Nina’s eyebrows rose slightly), not to mention that he needed to return to work without further ado—and would Ksenya be so kind as to bring him some coffee when it was ready? Then, murmuring unintelligible apologies to Dalevich, he retreated, past his son’s door, which was still demonstratively shut, back to the study. By the time he established himself at his desk, the last traces of his blithe morning mood had melted away like a desert mirage, and a long caravan of tedious, unhappy thoughts plodded across his mind. There was the matter of the room that needed to be arranged for that nuisance of a relative, and Vasily, whose slippery gaze and scoffing remarks had started to trouble him in earnest, and of course, the problem at hand—this insufferable essay on Dali that had been foisted upon him with so little ceremony.
The essay, at least, was resolving itself, he concluded after reviewing the text from the previous day. He had begun his narrative with a providentially remembered anecdote, which, being not only amusing but also undeniably metaphorical, spared him the unpleasantness of resorting to such harsh words as, for instance, “abnormal.” Once, during an arranged breakfast with a prominent Soviet poet, Dali had commented in passing on the stunning beauty of an atomic mushroom cloud rising in purple ripeness into the skies. Justifiably outraged by such lack of humanity, the Soviet celebrity, at a loss for a fitting repartee, promptly spat in Dali’s coffee. The artist remained unruffled. “I’ve tasted coffee with cream and sugar, with milk and various liqueurs,” he observed thoughtfully, “but never before with spittle”—and savoring the moment, he slowly carried the cup to his mustachioed lips.
Setting the emptied cup back into its porcelain nest, Sukhanov fed a blank page into his ancient typewriter. Strangely, in spite of the auspicious beginning, he felt singularly uninspired and for a while sat without typing, lightly tapping his index finger against the space bar and looking at his shelves. He knew the contents of his work library down to the spine. Starting with the subdued yet foreboding drumroll of a short essay collection by Marx and Engels, it continued with the tremulous flutelike notes of Plekhanov and Lunacharsky, then, with a wide, powerful sweep, moved into the avalanchine brasses of the maroon-clad marching band of Lenin’s
He sat gazing at the books for many empty minutes, ostensibly debating the choice of a quotation suitable as commentary on the Dali episode, in reality letting his thoughts wander somewhere far, far away; but eventually the shelves swam back into focus, and sighing, he reached for the most dog-eared volume of Lenin’s Works. It fell open predictably in just the place he sought, so often had he made use of these few thickly underlined paragraphs. Barely consulting the page, he began to type: “As Vladimir Ilyich Lenin said in his famous 1920 speech at the Third Congress of the Russian Communist Youth Union, ‘For us morality, taken apart from the human society, does not exist; it is a fraud. For us morality is subordinate to the interests of class struggle of the proletariat. Morality serves for the human society to ascend higher, to get rid of the exploitation of labor.’” He paused to consider, then went on, much more haltingly: “Without doubt, the same truth applies to art. Any art devoid of its underlying human principle can only lead to moral chaos, and…”
Each word dragged itself with an effort, like a half-dead prisoner burdened with lead weights at his ankles, and the world around seemed to conspire to make Sukhanov distracted and uncomfortable. The sun, rising higher, merrily danced off the bronze Pegasus at his elbow, tossing handfuls of annoying little flashes into his eyes. The customary piece of toast that Nina brought in at eleven o‘clock tasted vaguely of herring. The robe he wore felt stifling and unclean, but he was forced to perspire in helpless irritation since his clothes were trapped in the bedroom closet and he did not want to risk another awkward encounter with Dalevich. The telephone kept ringing with muffled persistence in the distant reaches of the apartment, making him lose what little concentration he could muster. After a mostly fruitless hour punctuated by sporadic bursts of typing, he pulled the page out of the typewriter and considered his single paragraph with a displeased frown. For a moment his pen hung poised over the lines like a bird of prey ready to swoop down for the kill; then, descending swiftly, it moved across the paper with such violence that a few sharp tears appeared in the text.
The new version was markedly shorter.
“In the well-known words of V. I. Lenin,” it read now, “ ‘Morality, taken apart from the human society, does not exist [tear]…. Morality serves for the human society to ascend higher [larger tear]….’ In certain ways, these words may apply to art.”
Here the paragraph ended, clearly leading nowhere. After some thought, Sukhanov crumpled the page and tossed it away, sending after it the three pages from the previous day. He missed the wastebasket every time. He then rolled a new sheet into the typewriter and banged out angrily: “Salvador Dali was born in 1904 in a small Spanish town. The artist’s father was…” At which point he stopped, and stared at nothing.
When, another futile hour later, an apologetic knock sounded on his door, he was glad for the interruption. It was his cousin, inviting him to dinner.
“I’ve taken the liberty to roast a small chicken,” said Fyodor Mikhailovich with a self-deprecating shrug, looking more than ever like a pleasant gentleman from the turn of the century.
At dinner, Vasily was absent again; he had apparently left sometime before, to spend the day at a friend’s dacha. “Ah yes, those last joys of summer,” said Sukhanov with a short laugh, addressing no one in particular. Nina had wanted to set the table in the dining room, since they had a guest, but Dalevich had implored her not to do anything special on his account. “Please don’t pay any heed to my presence,” he had begged in a heartfelt voice. In truth, it was rather hard to ignore his presence, as the man dominated all conversation. A curator of some northern folk museum, he had come to Moscow, it seemed, for the purpose of researching a book on icons, and now, his beard bristling, his glasses dancing, spoke with an endless, tiresome enthusiasm about egg yolk and cinnabar and what it must have meant for an artist to extract the colors for his masterpieces with his own hands from the world around him, from the earth upon which he had walked….
Sukhanov soon grew restless. “So, Fyodor,” he interrupted with a thin smile, “what do you think, did Rublev really exist, or is this just another myth of art history?”
Dalevich looked startled. Then he laughed.
“The only reason people doubt the existence of Rublev—or Shakespeare, for that matter,” he said, raising a gnawed chicken leg for emphasis, “is that it’s hard for ordinary minds like ours to imagine a genius of such magnitude. It makes us feel safer, wouldn’t you agree, to split a giant into several more manageable, only moderately oversized figures. And yet, however much it may dwarf us, I’m certain that the giants did live.” He paused for a discreet nibble on the chicken leg, then said mildly, “I hear, Tolya, you are writing a book as well?”
Sukhanov ceased smiling.
“An article,” he said stiffly. “About Dali. The surrealist.”
“Ah, but how fascinating!” Fyodor Mikhailovich exclaimed with delight. “So what’s your opinion of him, if I may ask?”
